Needle devices are used throughout the medical industry for the injection and withdrawal of a wide variety of fluids and solutions into and from the human body. Because of the numerous potential hazards associated with the handling and manipulation of bodily fluids, and particularly blood, there are a number of known safety features that are frequently incorporated into various types of needle devices to protect the practitioner from accidental exposure to the needle.
Prior safety needle devices include several disadvantages including having a retractable sheath requiring long stroke distances to activate the safety feature, multi-component retraction and locking elements, and conveying an undesirable significant force against a patient's skin during activation of the safety feature upon receiving an injection. Conventional retraction syringe assemblies often also do not incorporate reuse prevention features, and thus, the retraction mechanism of the syringe may be reset so the syringe barrel may be reused. The reuse of syringe assemblies without sterilization or sufficient sterilization is believed to facilitate the transfer of contagious diseases. Further, the retraction features of conventional syringes may also require the practitioner to actively activate the retraction mechanism. Accordingly, the chance of human error in failure to activate or properly activate the retraction mechanism can lead to continued exposure of needles leading to needle stick injuries.
Some known retracting sheath safety needle devices have been developed to include a single-use safety needle device assembly that obscures a substantial majority or an entirety of an injection needle from view before, during, and after an injection procedure. However, many injection procedures require that the practitioner know precisely the location and depth to which the needle is inserted in the patient's tissue to be sure that medication is delivered to an appropriate location. In addition, there exists a tendency for many practitioners to falsely assume that they were “safe” from needle stick injuries, even in the non-locked initial state, due to the tip of the prior art retracting sheath safety needle devices being fully covered in an unlocked state.
Thus, there is a need in the art to provide a safety needle device having a passive activation mechanism that overcomes the deficiencies of the known retracting sheath safety needle devices and which allows for shorter stroke distance, ease of use, low part count, low part complexity, relatively compact design, and clear and unobstructed view of needle in an initial position.